Morphology of Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter(RSPM) Emitted from Household fuels and their Health Implications

The present work is on morphological study of particulate emitted in three different households for different fuels (Kerosene, Biomass and LPG). Three sampling stations were considered in Mysore city. Indoor concentration of Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter (RSPM) emitted from all the three fuels were monitored using Personal air sampler. Sampling before, during and after cooking was carried out for 2 hours. The average indoor concentrations before, during and after cooking were found to be 67.93, 298.40 and 95.15?g/m3 respectively for kerosene. The average Indoor concentrations before, during and after cooking was found to be 67.06, 1484.89 and 485.768?g/m3 while the average concentrations for Indoor before, during and after cooking were found to be 53.03 ?g/m3 , 62.17 ?g/m3 and 57.22?g/m3 respectively for LPG. Biomass seems to emit high concentrations of RSPM followed by kerosene and LPG. To characterize the morphology of RSPM, filter papers were examined using Scanning Electron Microscopy. From these SEM images, it can observed that particles has a propensity to form flocculated aggregates, referred to as ‘spherules’ less than 100nm in equivalent spherical diameter (ESD), called as nanosized PM, where as Individual particles or ‘spherulites’, are less than 10nm in ESD. As there is greater pulmonary deposition efficiency of NPs, with their large surface area (SA) leads to cardiopulmonary toxicity. These PM may be able to cross the air barrier in the respiratory tract, which may lead to health effects such as inflammation , cardiac disruption and even may lead to death.